Biochemistry Quotes

“We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language.”
― Arne Tiselius

“The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself—not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day.”
― Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

“It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry—which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books—that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As far as I am aware the presently accepted set of twenty amino acids was first drawn up by Watson and myself in the summer of 1953 in response to a letter of Gamow's.”
― Francis Crick

“Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable.”
― Erwin Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature

“Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the scientific literature. Many of them don't have much to do with evolution - they're observations about the details of physiology, biochemistry, development, and so on - but many of them do. And every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect, supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don't have a single one. We don't find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find no species with adaptations that only benefit a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to a scientific truth.”
― Jerry A. Coyne, Why Evolution Is True

“Prereading is a game changer. It changed my life...Everyone is smarter when they have seen the material before. You will be too.”
― Peter Rogers MD

“Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role in the origin of the system... We find such systems within living organisms.”
― Scott A. Minnich

“There is only one historical development that has real significance. Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry. If we invest billions in understanding our brain chemistry and developing appropriate treatments, we can make people far happier than ever before, without any need of revolutions. Prozac, for example, does not change regimes, but by raising serotonin levels it lifts people out of their depression.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The night before a biochemistry class, I read the last year's lecture notes. I look at the pictures in the book. Now, I've got the general concept. Sure...There's a couple of details to fill in and a a few things to memorize. But that's no big deal. I've got the big picture, and that's all I need.

Bring it on professor, I'm ready.

That's right.

The next day, I'm a goalie sitting in the front row.

"Nothin gets past me."

My ability to comprehend a biochemistry lecture just went from 30% to 95%.

I went on to score 780 out of a possible 800 on the medical school boards exam in biochemistry. Given that the 99th percentile began around 690, this was one of the highest scores in the USA, perhaps the highest.”
― Peter Rogers MD

“Sex is far more widespread than seems reasonable.”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

“It now seems that life began, not with a single component like a gene, but with several components that could work together. Life is less about a particular substance, and more about the way a group of substances behave when they are combined.”
― Michael Marshall, The Genesis Quest: The Geniuses and Eccentrics on a Journey to Uncover the Origin of Life on Earth

“Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom they are based on calculation. (page 36)”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“As we mentioned in the previous chapter, scientific insights into the way our brains and bodies work suggest that our feelings are not some uniquely human spiritual quality, and they do not reflect any kind of 'free will'. Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom they are based on calculation.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“As we mentioned in the previous chapter, scientific insights into the way our brains and bodies work suggest that our feelings are not some uniquely human spiritual quality, and they do not reflect any kind of 'free will'. Rather, feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and reproduction. Feelings aren't based on intuition, inspiration or freedom they are based on calculation. (page 36)”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Prereading is a game changer. It changed my life. Everyone is smarter when they have seen the material before. You will be too”
― Peter Rogers, Straight A at Stanford and on to Harvard

“The night before a biochemistry class, I read the lecture notes from last year. I look at the pictures in the book. I read some of the book.

Now, I've got the general concept. Sure...There's a couple of details to fill in and a few things to memorize. but that's no big deal. I've got the big picture and that's all I need.

Bring it on professor. I'm ready.


That's right.

The next day, I'm a goalie sitting in the front row.

Nothin gets past me...

My ability to comprehend a biochemistry lecture just went up from 30% to 95%.

I went on to score 780 out of a possible 800 on the medical school biochemistry boards exam (USMLE 1).

Given that the 99th percentile began around 690, this was one of the highest scores in the USA, perhaps the highest.”
― Peter Rogers, Straight A at Stanford and on to Harvard

“The relevant steps in biological processes occur ultimately at the molecular level, so a satisfacatory explanation of a biological phenomenon--such as sight, digestion, or immunity--must include its molecular explanation.
Now that the black box of vision has been opened, it is no longer enough for an evolutionary explanation of that power to consider only the anatomical structures of whole eyes, as Darwin did in the nineteenth century (and as popularizers of evolution continue to do today).
Each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical processes that cannot be papered over with rhetoric.”
― Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

“The king of Siam once asked his wise men for a proverb that would be appropriate for any occasion. They suggested "This, too, shall pass".
Well, in biochemistry an equally appropriate saying for all occasions is "Things are more complicated than they seem".”
― Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

“In fact, none of the papers published in the JME over the entire course of its life as a journal has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual, step-by-step Darwinian fashion. Although many scientists ask how sequences can change or how chemicals necessary for life might be produced in the absence of cells, no one has ever asked in the pages of JME such questions as the following: How did the photosynthetic reaction center develop? How did intramolecular transport start? . . . The very fact that none of these problems is even addressed, let alone solved, is a very strong indication that Darwinism is an inadequate framework for understanding the origin of complex biochemical systems.”
― Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

“Every chemical compound, according to Engels, comes into existence only at a certain time in the development of the universe when the conditions are appropriate for it; and when it does come into existence it manifests this by entering into its characteristic relations. Neither carbon compounds or proteins are ideal forms, but are themselves witnesses of the conditions on a cooling planet. It is here that occurs his celebrated remark that life is the mode of existence of proteins.”
― J.D. Bernal, Marx and Science

“Most people have probably met enzymes in school biology as the agents responsible for digesting our food, breaking down the starch of pasta, rice, potatoes into sugar and so on. Many meet them again as they face their washing machine, stained sports clothes in hand, and wonder whether or not to use a ‘biological’ detergent, containing added but unspecified ‘enzymes’ to do mysterious things to the clothes. As it happens, in both contexts the enzymes’ function is very similar, breaking down large chemical molecules into smaller bits that will wash away. People do not generally realize, however, that enzymes have much wider and more diverse roles and that, in effect, they orchestrate the whole of life.”
― Paul Engel, Enzymes: A Very Short Introduction

“The domestication of plants in the Neolithic Revolution with the move from hunting and gathering to farming led to large-scale cultivation of various plants and hence greater potential availability of plant toxins than could have been present in the wild.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“Drug use has been found in all human societies throughout historical and prehistorical times, as well as being evident in closely related species. These observations warrant serious evolutionary exploration.”
― Riadh Abed, Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health

“I get a prompt about using my Dissociative Cognition System. It takes considerable effort to make even that decision, but I manage to give my systems the OK and immediately I can step back from the crushing burden of misery, cut off from certain aspects of my own biochemistry so that I can function and make rational decisions. It was an essential mod, for someone who was going to be on their own for long periods of time without any social contact. My emotions are still out there, and I can get fascinating readouts about what that locked-away part of me is actually feeling, good, indifferent, bad, worse, but it doesn't touch me unless I choose to open the door again. It's a fine line, I suspect, between useful logic and that pathological numbness that true depression can often lead to, where doing or wanting anything seems like climbing uphill.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race

“Anxiety is a powerful gift from almighty God. It is our fear of anxiety that destroys us.”
― William G. Alston

“Hopkins’s real mission was the development of biochemistry as an experimental discipline, with its own methodology and way of seeing the world. It was vibrant and fun. The lab’s journal, Brighter Biochemistry, included compilations of verse (Haldane wrote an annual report in rhyming couplets), exam questions from the future, cartoons and cautionary tales, such as laments for ‘Jane who had no bacteriological technique and so perished miserably’ and ‘Belinda who broke everything and left the laboratory under lamentable circumstances.’ Don’t be fooled by their irreverence. These were serious minds at play, and Hoppy’s laboratory nurtured some of the most imaginative and original scientists of their generation, including a number who went on to win Nobel prizes.”
― Nick Lane, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

“Putting terms aside, we’ll see that the ancient biosynthetic Krebs cycle was fixing CO2 a billion years before rubisco and the evolution of photosynthesis in the cyanobacterial ancestors of plant chloroplasts. When it first emerged, the reverse Krebs cycle had little to do with energy generation, instead providing the carbon skeletons needed for biosynthesis. This perspective elucidates the deep metabolism of cells, yet it is still largely missing from the more medically oriented textbooks. It’s a serious omission.”
― Nick Lane, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

“Keen to progress the work on photosynthesis, Lawrence hired Melvin Calvin, a colleague from the Manhattan Project, immediately after the war. The story has it that on the day of the Japanese surrender Lawrence told Calvin that ‘Now is the time to do something useful with radioactive carbon.”
― Nick Lane, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

“The need to prevent ferredoxin reacting with oxygen might also explain the propensity of rubisco to fix O2 through the apparently futile process of photorespiration. Very little in evolution is genuinely futile; if it survives natural selection there is usually a reason. In the case of rubisco, think what happens if CO2 levels fall while O2 levels rise inside a leaf (when the stomatal pores are closed). Now rubisco is obliged to slow down because its substrate, CO2, is in short supply. This means that NADPH cannot pass on its electrons to regenerate NADP+. As a result, ferredoxin in turn is unable to pass on its electrons, and so it becomes reactive with oxygen, just when oxygen levels are rising. To stave off catastrophe, rubisco consumes oxygen instead. Photorespiration converts NADPH back to NADP+, allowing ferredoxin to offload its electrons again. So it could be that photorespiration acts as a safety valve, lowering the levels of reactive ferredoxin and oxygen simultaneously, staving off an impending catastrophe.”
― Nick Lane, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

“The dream of every cell is to become two cells’ said François Jacob, the most lyrical revolutionary of molecular biology. No cell lives the dream so wholly or so senselessly as a cancer cell, turning dream to nightmare. Nothing else captures the myopic immediacy of natural selection so starkly. The moment is all that matters for selection: there is no foresight, no balance, no slowing at the prospect of doom. Just the best ploy for the moment, for me, right now, not for the many, and often mistaken. Cancer cells die in piles, necrotic flesh worse than the trenches. The decimated survivors mutate, evolve, adapt, exploit their shifting environment, selfish to the bitter end. Their horror is that they know no bounds. They will eat away at our flesh to fuel their pointless lives and deaths, until, if we are unlucky, they take us too. I am writing about cancer, but must confess that I have the pointless greed and destruction of humanity at the back of my mind. May we find it within ourselves to be better than cancer cells.”
― Nick Lane, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death